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Come on in, friend! Pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and let's chat! I'd love to share what God's been putting on my heart about the topics of family, femininity, and faith, and you do the same. If you want to go deeper, join my Facebook group for "This Side of Heaven", and be sure to subscribe to keep up with every new post (no spam, I promise!). I look forward to getting to know you and sharing the journey "this side of Heaven!"

In our Classical Conversations curriculum this week, our science memory work is about three natural cycles: the water cycle, the carbon oxygen cycle, and the nitrogen cycle. To make it more real, after reading about the water cycle and completing a worksheet, we decided to do a hands-on science experiment that I found online to illustrate the water (http://celfeducation.org/documents/WaterCycleBag.pdf).

When I told my daughter we would do an experiment about the water cycle today, her eyes lit up.

This is one of the things I love about teaching my children at home. The teachable moments. "Yes," I told her. "God is going to do it, because He made the rules for how the world works. When we do things according to those rules, we can pretty much know what will happen."

We did set up the experiment and are now in the waiting phase, where my daughter keeps asking, "Is it raining yet?" And while the answer right now is, "no", she is confident that it will, because we are working with God's rules and He will make it happen.

I wonder how many times in a day I overlook God's role in my life. It's so easy to get caught up in my agenda and my plans, instead of going to God, making sure I understand His plans and His rules, and then doing what I can to work alongside Him. How often do I try to "make it rain" on my own efforts, instead of humbly submitting my plans and desires to the Lord, and, while I am setting things up as best I can, trusting Him to do it in the end?

This is true for raising our children, too, regardless of what style of schooling we choose. There is no way I can "make it rain" in my children's lives - I can't make them grow up to be mature adults who love the Lord and care for others. But I can use what I know about God's world and God's Word and set up the circumstances that can nurture those qualities we want to grow in them. And with a lot of prayer, and a little bit of patience, I can have confidence in His ability to do what I cannot.

We talk about what life and air travel and national security was like "before 9/11".

We realize that we now live in a "post-9/11" world and that life will never be the same again.

Today, twelve years after the terrorist attacks, I dwell on those things, too.

I was teaching that day, running my usual circuit as an itinerant ESOL teacher, going from school to school. What I remember the most is getting in my car and hearing on the news that the World Trade Center had just been hit by an airplane. At that moment, they didn't know how many people were in the tower, only that it was possible that 50,000 people were inside, and the potential loss of so many lives was overwhelming.

As I went from school to school, each time I got in my car, or went into a school building, the news got worse. Another tower hit. Both towers down. The Pentagon hit. A plane down in Pennsylvania. As a teacher, I kept it together for my students. But inside, like everyone else I encountered that day, I was numb, and realized that our world had just changed in irreversible ways.

September 11 was part of my "before" in other ways, too.

It was before I was married.

It was before I had children - children for whom 9/11 is an event on their Classical Conversations Timeline, but not a part of their memories.

It was before I buried my daughter Naomi, and said good-bye to two other babies.

It was before I wrestled on a deeply personal level with the question of why God, being perfectly good and all-powerful, allows such tragedies to happen - and why one person is spared and another isn't.

Thinking back to 9/11 today, I have a profound answer to that question.

I don't know.

I know the theological answer, that our world is broken and sin-scarred and that God allows us free will and so sinful people do awful things and sometimes our bodies don't work and babies die.

But as to why thisperson was late to work the morning of 9/11 and so was not in his office when the towers were hit, or why thatdear friend was in the wrong place at the wrong time to encounter a drunk driver, or why mybody had to start breaking down at exactly the wrong moment to cause my baby to die in my womb.

I don't know.

But I know this. God is good. God is sovereign. He's got this, and someday when we see Him face-to-face it will either make sense or it won't matter anymore.

Psalm 46:1-3 (NIV) says, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." And may I add...

Today, on the anniversary on 9/11, in what area are you struggling to trust God? Do you dare to believe in His goodness and love, in spite of the tragedies of this life? This is what faith is - not mustering up enough willpower to believe that God will protect you and your loved ones from harm, but trusting in His character, in Who He is, regardless of what you encounter on life's journey. This is what He calls us to, those of us who follow Him, who point to an ugly Roman cross and an empty stone tomb as the ultimate proof of God's love and power.

It should have been a simple assignment - write the date (August 30, 2013) in her notebook. I was even dictating how to spell the word "August".

But my daughter had other ideas. She wanted to talk about how pretty her 3 looked.

Just write the date, sweetie.

And to comment on how my letter "t" was not written the way the handwriting model showed.

Honey, write the date.

And why did she have to make her numbers big instead of small?

Just write it!

Thirty minutes later, her notebook said, "Augus 3". No year. The letter "t" had been erased in a fit of frustration. And we were both ready to quit.Three weeks into our homeschooling journey and I was ready to quit because of a missing letter and a little girl who doesn't like to do things the same way everyone else does. As I got up from the sofa for a much-needed break, all I could think was, Are we making a mistake? How would we conquer phonics and spelling and world history and advanced algebra (someday!) if writing the date undid us? Maybe I wasn't the best one to be teaching my daughter after all.

In that moment, though, I also realized that the battle that morning was very small compared to what probably lies ahead. Not just battles over lessons and learning, but over life. There will be many times in the future that my daughter and I will clash wills, when I will want her to do something one way and she will insist on doing it with her own creative flair, or when she will question why she must obey someone else's direction. At five years old, those parts of her personality are already very clear!

It is my job as her mother to wisely read those situations and know how to guide her. Sometimes I need to recognize her creativity and individuality and let her express herself in her own way. Sometimes I will have to change what we are doing at that moment, to give her a break, with a plan to tackle it later. Sometimes I will need to give her an explanation of the why to honor her curiosity. And sometimes she is going to need to just buckle down and write the date in submission to those God has placed over her.

My job - to read the situations well, to read my daughter well, and to gently guide her and help her make choices that will form her character as she grows up. Isn't that one of our reasons for homeschooling in the first place? To have that time together where such moments will happen and we can address those kinds of issues when they come up. It's so much more than reading, writing , and arithmetic. It's also character - correcting and training in righteousness. Not only hers, but mine, too! Because the wisdom to do that, and the grace to be patient when she doesn't see the wisdom of writing the date in her notebook, will only come as an overflow of my relationship with God.

When I returned to the living room, the notebook was put away until the next day. We went on with something else and ended the morning with a hug. It reminded us of how our relationship with each other is one of the most precious parts of our homeschooling experience. Neither one of us will do things perfectly this year, but together we can trust God and lean on Him for the strength to learn and to grow.

What hurdles are you anticipating, and what are you trusting God to give you the strength for this year?

Welcome!

Welcome! My name is Kristi. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a teacher, a writer, a musician... but most of all a child and worshiper of God discovering that even in life's messes, God is still good. Learn more about me and my journey here!

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Our family's story: a time of waiting and prayer, the birth of our sunshine daughter, the second trimester loss of our daughter Naomi, the first trimester losses of our babies Kyria and Jordan, another time of waiting and prayer, the birth of our rainbow son, the first trimester losses of our babies Hope and Christmas, and finally, another time of waiting and praying.